Cattarin: Correcting the math used against wind power

Wednesday

Apr 30, 2014 at 1:28 AM

By Gary CattarinGuest Columnist

It baffles me why The Daily News so frequently permits the abuse of their pages by the same individuals spouting utterly false and misleading positions. I would posit that many of your readers share my fatigue each time we see the name Matthew Hurwitz, yet today you granted him not just another letter but an entire guest column. While he is entitled to his views, I suggest that he is not entitled to spread complete falsehoods based on ignorance.In Monday’s misguided sermon, Mr. Hurwitz, the ultimate climate denier, tries to discredit the concept of wind power by claiming with glee that it would require 4.86 billion turbines to provide enough generation capacity to power the United States. I claim with greater glee that he doesn’t understand basic power generation mathematics.He arrives at this ludicrous number by dividing the total annual electric consumption of the United States, stated as 4,047 billion megawatt hours (a reasonably accurate figure, easily confirmed via authoritative sources, so we’ll go with that), and dividing that by the capacity of a typical turbine, stated at 2.5 megawatts (also a reasonable figure), reduced by a factor of three due to what is known as capacity factor – the fact that a turbine cannot operate at full rated capacity due to the fickle nature of the wind (again, reasonable). He then rants about the cost in both monetary and human terms of building and operating those 4.86 billion turbines. Sounds convincing, right?If what he says was true, considering that the United States already produces over 4 percent of its electricity from wind, we’d already have nearly 200 million wind turbines – more than one for every two Americans, and about 65 turbines on every square mile of land in the lower 48 states (seeing as our distribution grid doesn’t extend to the Alaska or Hawaii). That’s over 1,400 turbines in Marl borough’s 22 square miles alone! Clearly either we’ve developed amazing stealth turbine technology, or Mr. Hurwitz is very, very wrong.I’ll opt for the latter option. Mr. Hurwitz, I’m sorry to tell you this, but you are very, very wrong. The capacity of a generation plant, measured in megawatts, and consumption, measured in megawatt hours, are not the same unit of measure. You can’t do the math that way.A 2.5 megawatt plant operating at a capacity factor of 100 percent would produce 15,900 megawatt hours of electricity. This is simple math: 2.5 megawatts times 365 days times 24 hours per day. Those of you who want to check your work for extra credit can see that megawatts times hours gives you megawatt hours. Reducing that value by a factor of three per the typical capacity factor of a wind turbine means a typical turbine can deliver about 5,200 megawatt hours annually. Now, Mr. Hurwitz, you can do your division, and you’ll find that rather than 4.86 billion turbines (let’s spell that out for contrast: 4,860,000,000), about 770,000 would do the trick, and that number continues to drop as turbine technology advances.I don’t claim that number to be authoritative, but it’s an estimate with the right order of magnitude. But if it still sounds like a large number, consider that there were 483,000 producing gas wells (2012) and an additional 363,000 producing oil wells (2009) in the United States (data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, www.eia.gov). These are only wells in active production, not counting abandoned and non-productive wells (so there are and have been plenty more), and of course other power sources such as coal carry immense land and resource use implications.Nobody claims that wind power is nirvana. Its fickle nature demands a mix of sources and an agile distribution grid. And like everything, it has a cost and carries trade-offs. But it cannot be denied that every megawatt hour of wind power reduces both fossil fuel usage and greenhouse gas emissions. Or if you’re still a climate denier and that doesn’t do it for you, be happy that it also helps prevent mountaintops in West Virginia from being leveled and water supplies contaminated.Mr. Hurwitz, you have a right to your opinion, but get your facts straight. Think first, speak later. And to The Daily News, you needn’t censor extreme views, but some basic fact-checking is in order, as is a reasonable limit on how often specific individuals are permitted to monopolize your pages.Gary Cattarin lives in Marlborough.